2010 Resolution

Men fucking piss me off these days. They’re always such great company until it sinks in that I’m not going to fuck them – then all of a sudden it’s okay to be obnoxious and rude, or snarling accusations at me for being a tease, or worst of all, trying to emotionally manipulate me.

“You mean you’re not going to fuck me? Really? Really? Why not?! Really? Why won’t you? Really? You’re really not going to? Well, you’re a bitch anyway. I can’t believe how you can just do this to me, just trample all over my delicate feelings for you. I really thought we could have made things work, you know, you’re really special to me. Well, you *were* really special to me. Now I know you’ve just been using me.”

Fuck off. Seriously. Fuck right off. I’d rather shit a knife than fuck any one of the blithering morons who claim to be “interested” in me.

True story: one particularly raving moron said pretty much all of the above (in the mock monologue) and ended his ranting like this:

“Well, what do you have to say? Huh? Prove me wrong, why don’t you? Just tell me why you had to be so cruel. Just tell me why.”

And after I spent an hour explaining why I wouldn’t fuck him and why he had clearly misunderstood me:

“Okay, enough talking. I’ll forgive you if you come over in that gorgeous satiny dress of yours. We can forget this whole thing ever happened and make it work between us. What? So you still won’t fuck me? Really?! Why?! Please just come over, everything will be okay once you do. Just come over.”

And after half an hour of adamantly refusing to fuck him, yes, really, really not going to fuck him, NOT EVER:

“Well, I thought you’d proven me wrong but I guess I was right all along. You are a bitch.”

My resolution this year is to be more assertive, even though I know it will be painful. Last year there were a few points at which I was in the company of someone who was saying or doing something that I found extremely offensive, and I was close to tears in silent anger because I refused to lose my cool. It was appalling to realize just how distressed I was, yet acknowledge that I just couldn’t speak up. It was humiliating and pathetic.

This year I will lose my cool. If someone is annoying me I will tell him, and if he continues I’ll leave. I will try not to feel guilty, and I will give myself a small reward each time I stand up to someone who thinks it’s his right to impose his whims upon me, or that his time is more important than mine, or that if he tries hard enough, I’ll give in to whatever he wants.

Happy new year, all. Thanks for continuing to read this blog. I’ll update more often, I promise.

Chasing tail

On my way to Stereolounge for a party with hot lesbians and free flow of alcohol. Tonight I want to meet someone gorgeous and wild, who will make me catch my breath, and take me home with her. But who am I kidding?

Intelligence Squared Debate – Is the Catholic church a force for good?

I watched this Intelligence Squared Debate a few nights ago with P (we are still good friends, and I particularly enjoy our intellectual compatibility). If you haven’t seen it, it’s a brief debate with the motion: “Is the Catholic church a force for good in this world?”

In favour of the motion are Archbishop John Onaiyekan and Ann Widdecombe; against the motion, Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens. Heavyweights indeed. It wasn’t particularly insightful for me, but I was quite interested in seeing how the hardcore Catholics would respond to the charges of anti-Semitism, child rape, advocation against use of condoms etc.

It’s rather predictable (pitting a bad orator and a shrill middle-aged MP against two bestselling, award-winning writers/journalists with excellent research to substantiate their claims and the floor is full of intellectuals? Gee, can’t tell how they’d be swayed), but enjoyable. I still think the Church is full of shit, but that’s probably because I wasn’t born a woman in Kenya with a body wracked with AIDS and a hut in a village where the menfolk would likely rape me quite gleefully. It’s a good reminder to keep things in perspective.

 

 

Hooking up Akon-style

 

Me: So…when can I tap that?

Her: Anytime baby, it’ll cost you though.

Me: Cost me? Well how much to dress you in a sailor suit and cover you in peptobismol while i tap that?

Her: There is a high price on good quality my friend. Could cost ya a trip to the bank. Although that is a very simple request

Me: Money ain’t a problem baby. Besides, I’m so good you’ll be throwin money at me. I can get freakier too. You want it in the kitchen or on the street?

Her: Damn, sounds kiny. I’m turned on already. I’m good in both public and private. Which wold you prefer?

Me: Yeah girl. Get you freak on. You know, I got a hot-tub. Like Biggie said, “we can smoke a joint in the
jacuzzi, get high while ya do me”. Get wet.

Her: Your wild.

Me: And in your driveway.

Her: I’ll be out in a minute. Anything you think I’ll need?

Me: Well a firefighter is normally recomended for a hose this big.

Her: It’s okay. I just watched Crocodile Dundee. I should be able to choke that anaconda.

 

From Can I Tap That?.

QOTD: Have you ever been in love

I was going to write today. I was. I’ve been telling myself since I woke up – “Today I will write in my blog, and it will not be trash” – so obviously I didn’t get around to doing it at all until now, when I’m ready for bed.

I’ve been going through my email archives and rediscovering many gems. I don’t have many friends, but happily most of them are intellectually inclined, insatiably curious, or full of delightful quirks and interesting/bizarre ideas, and many emails we exchange contain wonderful things: a link to an interesting article, an amusing video, a poem, cute pictures.

Here’s a passage from the Sandman series that my good friend, Siew, sent me a few months ago.

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up a whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life… You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ or ‘how very perceptive’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love.”

Dry-cleaning in Singapore sucks

Why the fuck do dry cleaners in Singapore take so long to do their job? Every dry cleaner I go to – regardless of whether their company boasts a name like “Super Instant Xpress Dry Clean” – tell me flatly that the fastest they can dry-clean anything at all is three days.

Three. Days. I am assured by my more widely-travelled friends that in all other major cities, dry cleaning takes less than a day. You drop your shit off in the morning, you come back at noon or in the evening and it’s done and you pay the dude. Here, it’s just not possible to do anything, anywhere, in under three days.

So today I got my colleague to send my jacket to the dry cleaner’s for me. He came back with the receipt, and I opened it, expecting the usual three days. But no – Laundry Club takes SEVEN fuckin’ work days to dry-clean one ladies’ jacket. Seven days. Seven days. Where the fuck do they clean the clothes, Indonesia? Because I could take a ferry to Indonesia and get it cleaned, and take a ferry back in less than a day.

Someone ought to set up a genuine express dry-cleaning store here. There’d be a tremendous market for it.

The elegant heart

I marvel at how, despite all our bluster and grandiose pretensions of complexity, and all the *time* and the gargantuan efforts we put into trying to achieve self-awareness — we are really stunningly simple, almost touchingly innocent people.

Calliope’s oasis

Using my first iPhone. I am happy with it – I love being connected. Technology is so cool.

I hope to be writing more regularly. I’ve noticed an alarming rate of deterioration in my vocabulary when I write less. They say you are an average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. This appears to hold particularly true for my language skills, which affects my ability to think eloquently and quickly. Rather unpleasant.

Still alive, don’t worry

I’ve been feeling tired and uninspired and a little sad recently, which is why I haven’t been writing.

I’ve got a new job, I’ve told the previously-mentioned Shahrukh Khan to (pretty much) fuck off, I’m gaining a bit of weight, and I got my hair cut. There you go – all the significant events since my last update. I also discovered – to my astonishment and delight – my ability to squirt. Now there’s one more career option if I flunk out of university… ;)

Anyway, I am going out tonight, so I’ll leave you instead with an excerpt of an email I wrote to a friend recently:

Some days at work (like today) I fight to stay awake, and often look (desperately) for distraction. Unfortunately – and I must have mentioned it before, but I’ll say it again – the Internet usage restrictions here are terribly oppressive. Pretty much every site with interesting content is banned, damn it. This includes Gmail, Youtube, Facebook, Blogger, WordPress, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, and a ton of other pages. I can read the NYT, for example, but not NYT blogs. Actually, every URL with the word “blog” in it is banned.

Are you a coffee or tea person? My new office is smack in the middle of the Central Business District, which depressed me for about two weeks. Walking to work every day, being one of the thousands of corporate drones thinking about clients, meetings, one hand furiously texting, the other holding a Starbucks takeaway (soy or low-fat to fight off the flab – another woeful by-product of being shackled to a desk for 8 hours a day), hundreds of heels clicking briskly on the pavement. People glance at each other absently, their eyes vacant with the preoccupation of slipping into their soulless work-egos, though there is occasionally a brief flicker of a comrade-like mutual respect, resignation and ironic self-importance upon recognizing the person walking past you as another corporate slave dimwit.

*sigh* Take me out of here.

The march down the aisle

“I pride myself on living in the real world… that’s why I still enjoy hanging out with you, despite the pain it causes me. Not pain–” he hastens to correct himself. “–I didn’t mean that the way it came out. But…”

“OK.”

“Even if I leave out how hot you are, you’re still intelligent, whimsical, degenerate; you like fucking, nerds, books, ideas, and conversations. In theory you should be (romantically) interested in  me, but you’re not, and it makes me ask — “if she won’t have me, then what else is there left for me in this world?”"

“OK…”

“But I’m not leaving because I think more than a lover — or at least everything I can offer you as one — you need a friend. You need someone to be there for you.”

I feel a pang of guilt and longing, and blink back sudden tears. I realize just how clearly he understands me — what it cost him to say those words, how much he knows his friendship means to me, his acceptance of me, and his decision to stay anyway. I don’t know if I’ll ever make a friend like that again, but I know I must do everything possible to keep this one close.